Knicks Morning News (2019.01.04)

Also, Capela’s contract is looking like a major steal by now. He’s playing like a man possessed right now.

I thought he was worth something and this deal proves it.

He was worth what WHG was worth on the open market 🙂 (nothing as satisfying as re-opening that can of worms!)

It will bee a better league if Durant have his own team.
He is at par or even better than the likes of Curry, harden, westbrook, and right up there with lebron. He should be the one putting up those harden like or Westbrook like numbers. Hope he will have the guts to do it,
Hello KD, go to New York!

Or it could also mean that GM decisions are often suboptimal and affected by many peripheral reasons and that Memphis is losing steam on the season and felt the need to overpay for a mediocre player.

I’d take a flyer on Cam Payne. I liked him a lot out of college, and he’s had some bad luck with injuries. He’ll never be the future HOFer that Mudiay is, but we could at least give him some mop up minutes on the way to one of our championships.

mop up minutes

soak up usage*

Seriously, I don’t see the point of wasting more roster slots on washed-up/unproductive veterans, especially with injury problems. I think it’s an old-guard inefficient move that a wise franchise could exploit by simply not doing it.

Imagine how much more uPsIdE this team would have if they spent the Hezonja, Mudiay, Jack, Sessions, Thomas, Beasley, Jennings, Rose, Sasha, Afflalo, Seraphin, Derrick Williams, Amundson, Jimmer, and Jah Smith roster slots on young, productive NCAA undrafteds and ended up hitting on just two of them for above-average rotation players. Signing Cam Payne would be “just one” slot, but it continues the streak of wasting opportunities on guys who have virtually zero chance of being worth their contract.

And before you say, “But Vonleh!” Vonleh’s success, as you can see from the list above, is uncommon and weird.

And before you say, “But Vonleh!” Vonleh’s success, as you can see from the list above, is uncommon and weird.

And Vonleh was the last addition to the roster, on a minimum partially unguaranteed contract.

Fizdale is a fraud who needs employment to legitimize himself, so he’ll never rock the boat.

I don’t know if I’d call him a total fraud, but in a few months here he made ring my internal alarms for people who don’t call things like they are, which is a good quality to have in a coach as long as you use it just to shield the team away from external turmoil. In any other case, it makes you a bullshit spewer and these things will come back to haunt you.

we’d all be saying Fiz was Nostradamus if he’d have just tweaked his message slightly and proclaimed Draymond could become the Warriors version of Lance Thomas

The offense is real bad but there’s definitely been a couple defensive systems. Every coach look like shit when your roster is shit. Saying bullshit to shield the team, that’s a 24/7 job with this roster.

On the subject of trading Kanter, the Bensons don’t really care about basketball (see hiring Saints medical personnel for the Pelicans to save money). Best case scenario, we’ve got a 12.5% shot at Zion in this draft and everyone else in the class is a scrub. Kanter plus Thomas for Davis works. Would the Bensons take that plus our first as a sweetener?

On Fiz, sitting Gasol when Gasol was sucking isn’t a bad sign in my book. There are definte concerns with Fizdale, but it doesn’t really matter if he sucks right now and it’s too early to get the hook out.

it’s too early to get the hook out.

I’d totally agree if there was no impeding Mudiay extension.

Every coach look like shit when your roster is shit.

We made Mike D’Antoni work with Chris Duhon as his PG and Pringles put together a league average offense, a surprisingly good defense, and won 32 games with an SRS of -2.33. And we could all see from day 1 where he intended to take us.

Fizdale is on pace for 19 wins with an SRS of -8.08. I’m happy about it, because I’d be mad if he were winning. But don’t tell me a good coach can’t put something decent together with bad players.

Maybe he’s just a great tank commander who’s doing this for Zion and he’ll work on NBA basics with his team next year. That’s really the only defense of him.

The Fizdale hate here is nonsense

It’s just me. Don’t put it on the whole blog.

We know nothing about what he would do with a real team except if you watch what he installed in Memphis where everyone was praising him for massively increasing Gasol’s 3pt rate.

He took over a team that won 42 games and was the 7th seed and coached them to 43 wins and the 7th seed. Then what that team lost it’s PG all hell broke lose and they fired him primarily because he alienated the team’s best player. So I’d say we know something, and it’s not good, no matter how many 3’s Gasol shot.

I don’t want to pay him either, but I think some of you guys are under-estimating how much Mudiay has improved, especially finishing. he’s shooting much better than he ever has, and his FT’s are up. Give Fiz a little credit. He said he’d get him right……he didn’t define what right was. If he had said “I’m gonna take you from a dude about to go to China to a serviceable backup PG who needs to improve on D”…..that would have made sense.

I’m not sure what a good coach not named Pop could do w/ this roster, with no KP. We were starting 3 rookies at one point, 1 was undrafted, one a 2nd rounder. Hell, Rick Carlisle won 24 games last year, so did Bud in Atlanta.

It’s not just Hubert. It’s Farfa too.

Yeah, but I’d say it’s criticism and not hate. And believe me, I’d like to be wrong on Fizdale. For now we know nothing but I don’t think you can ignore the red flags.

I’m concerned about Fiz, and was even before his hiring. He wears his verbal sheep dip on his sleeve.

However, yeah, he’s got a really crappy roster. We may learn alot after the trading dealine. I’m more concerned right now with the team prez and GM and what they might do or not do. They really need to try to sell off Mudiay, Lee, Kanter, LT, if at all possible. Also, Fiz really needs to just give Frank, Robinson, Trier, and Knox as much time on the court together as possible.

As for Fiz fixing Mudiay, likely two other reasons factor in as well: first, Mudiay apparently is in good shape, maybe for the first time in his career. Second, the dreaded playing for his next contract effect. Is the guy finally motivated to be a good player from here on out or just motivated to secure a multi-year deal and then regress right back to laziness?

Its very odd to me that on the one hand people want the team to suck so badly that we get the top lottery pick but then turn around and shit on the players and coach because the team is bad.

This is too simple.

It is perfectly reasonable to notice that a coach or player is not good while you want the team to tank.

As for Fiz fixing Mudiay, likely two other reasons factor in as well: first, Mudiay apparently is in good shape, maybe for the first time in his career. Second, the dreaded playing for his next contract effect. Is the guy finally motivated to be a good player from here on out or just motivated to secure a multi-year deal and then regress right back to laziness?

Third: Mudiay isn’t fixed.

It’s hard to see any sort of system in place when you have the worst roster in the league. I’m pretty sure Nets fans felt the same about Kenny Atkinson when they had the worst team in the league and Atkinson, a guy credited for having a point guard friendly system, couldn’t develop D’Angelo Russell.

The Fizdale hate here is myopic at best. You cannot judge him based on much with this group, and I would argue the most convincing piece of evidence either way is his willingness to bench Kanter for both Mitch and Kornet. Say what you want about his tolerating iso ball, but he started Frank Ntilikina at two different positions before moving him to the bench. Dame Dotson was a starter before both Kevin Knox and Allonzo Trier. Trey Burke has been glued to the bench, and you can’t argue that he’s chasing wins because he’s glued Lance Thomas and Courtney Lee to the bench. Maybe the offense would look better if Kanter was setting real screens and not clogging the paint by rolling when a perimeter player is driving.

It’s actually nuts how a stat based community is out on a coach, same coach who had this roster winning games they had no business in, is out on a coach after 40 games. I mean people hated him here for going against the tank to play Emmanuel Mudiay. Let’s all relax and wait and see what he does with Zion and KP in the fold.

It’s actually nuts how a stat based community is out on a coach,

It’s nuts that you think the community is out on the coach when 99% of it is from me.

I’m actually surprised more people aren’t. He’s a guy who derided stats at his last stop, valued athleticism over production, and had problems with european players. We’ve seen all that continued here.

I guess it’s not important now since we have much bigger issues to worry about.

it’s really hard to judge him on wins and losses…hard to judge him on player development…hard to judge him on the team’s offensive and defensive performances…some of these guys on the team, may just not be very good nba talent…

To be fair, geo, I didn’t judge him on any of those things. I’m dismayed by the processes, not the results.

I said it’s not that the offense is bad, for instance. it’s that there is no offensive structure, no philosophy, no foundation that I could see running better with superior players.

A good coach, leader, manager, etc typically implements a sound structure right away. You can’t judge him on the poor execution of his plans if the talent is bad. But you can notice that he doesn’t seem to have any good plans to implement.

I’m dismayed by the processes, not the results.

Of course that’s what it is. I don’t care at all if we win 25, 18 or 32 games as long as the situation gets handled correctly.

When Fiz trotted out the starting five of Frank-THJ-Dotson-Vonleh-Mitch, that was the correct way to me. When he pulled the plug with that experiment, saying “we need to win, and that lineup isn’t helping”, what do you think he was saying exactly? Because that lineup had a good net rating, and the ones that followed didn’t. (Take that for data!)

So Fiz is either 1) dumb or 2) willing to do what the front office dictates him unless things aren’t salvageable in front of the public opinion. The fact that he’s starting Kornet and he’s not playing Burke just tells me that management has deemed both Enes and Trey useless in terms of resigning them.

I also ask: if the team has no offensive coherence, is it really on the coach the (questionable) development of some of the pieces? Or is it the fact that Knox and Mudiay just have been given full license to play through mistakes (while others – cough Frank cough – don’t benefit at the moment from the same trust)?

I’m asking. I’m not saying I have the answers. Fiz might turn out a great coach, for all we know. But 38 games are enough to form ideas and question marks.

@41 I don’t think anybody thought we would win less games than I did. My prediction hovered between 19-23 wins. Never have I ever thought this current iteration of a Knicks team would be a sneaky playoff unit because I knew we had a total of maybe 3 defenders expected to be in our rotation, and the best defender on our team is about as raw as a juice bar on offense.

Fizdale can be as random as he wants because it all equals to zero. Our best five man unit would still be terrible so if he wants to start Luke Kornet over Kanter? Great. Ntilikina is struggling so you’re gonna sit him and give another player his 18 minutes tonight? Cool. Tim Hardaway Jr keeps making the wrong read from the option offense? Maybe he’ll figure it out tomorrow. None of this shit matters because they all suck. Everybody has been given an opportunity to play and keep a job, and the only guy who has earned his job is Vonleh. Mitch got pulled because he couldn’t stay out of foul trouble. Ntilikina started two different positions before he got benched, and then he shot himself into 4 DNP-CD’s. Dotson had his chance, too. Hezonja had a shot, Kanter had a shot, Mudiay sucks but he’ll get you a high assist game or enough 3PMs to stave off the other terrible alternatives. The only player that has been immune to being pulled in and out of games no matter what is Timmy, and I really think that’s a decision coming from above. Either way, I’m not holding anything from this season against Fizdale unless he starts Kanter the rest of the way or sits Frank until April. All of the “win now” types in the fold (Burke, Kanter, Lee, Thomas) aren’t being prioritized. I really don’t know what more you can reasonably ask from the guy.

I wouldn’t allow Frank Ntilikina to play through his mistakes if that mistake was consistently “defer to Tim Hardaway Jr, Emmanuel Mudiay, and Allonzo Trier as if they are Chris Paul, James Harden, and Lou Williams”. It’s literally a waste of his own minutes when he hands the ball off at the top of the key and stands in the corner. Even Noah Vonleh grabs a rebound and dribbles it up court consequences be damned. Frank is a uniquely bad player as he’s conservatively inefficient. How do you work with that?

The Fizdale hate here is nonsense

It’s just me. Don’t put it on the whole blog.

I wouldn’t use the word hate, but I’ve been using the term “snake oil salesmen” for several weeks now to describe the current management team. We know Mills is an incompetent. The evidence is accumulating that Perry is not much better. He also overvalues athletic scorers than can create relative to defenders and efficiency (again, Vonleh the exception). I’ve seen nothing that makes me feel good about Fizdale either. He’s the typical salesman. He’s overly upbeat and optimistic about everything. That makes players and fans feel good, but it doesn’t translate into wins.

The only thing we’ve done fairly well is draft, but we’ve been doing that well all along and that competency was probably left over, not added. Gaines is gone.

Coaching during a transition from false win-now to abject tanking is a delicate dance. On one hand you want to avoid the appearance of losing on purpose or one group will crucify you. On another hand, you don’t want to completely alienate the vets that you’re stuck with or everything from the locker room to the media room to the court and bench to media relations gets poisoned. On the third hand, you want to not get fired by ignoring the will of the FO, whether they are intrusive about it or now. Thanks to a bad managerial decision, you are stuck with TH2 so you better play and praise him. Management traded assets for Mudiay, and there is no PG better than him on the roster, so you better play and praise him. I don’t really see anything seriously wrong with the way Fiz has handled PT or rotations. Everyone has gotten a fair opportunity, especially Kanter and his whiny self. He’s gone above and beyond to repair the damage that Horny created with KP, and his comment about KP not running yet was probably accurate (notice that the increasingly petulant KP posted a picture, not a video, and he is still nowhere near ready to return)

As to offensive and defensive systems, Fiz has received high praise from his former bosses and colleagues, specifically about his knowledge of the game. I tend to think that he’s keeping things very simple for developmental reasons. I thought we ran a reasonably competent motion offense last game, and looked great in the wins against better teams like Boston, Memphis, Orlando and Milwaukee. We’ve also been competitive in lots of losses, including last game vs. a very good Denver team. We had 28 assists and 8 turnovers in that game. Hardaway Jr. took 12 shots. Kanter played 20 minutes. Kornet had 19 points on 9 shots, nearly all assisted.

Coaching a contender is much simpler; Play the players you think give you the best chance to win, period.

Still again, one more thing.

Recently I read an article where Mills answered a question about the cap space. He said that if he couldn’t fill it with the type of star that he’s hoping for he might “roll it over”.

“Roll it over” means signing veterans and other mediocre players to short term contracts while the younger players and draft picks develop. Then you have that cap space available again shortly when the team is better and you have a better chance to sign a star. Not that I think that’s optimal. It sucks. Buy he’s taking a page out of Phil’s book – which is better than destroying value by signing the next Hardaway to a long term contract.

@53 you just literally and completely made up everything you said in that post. Nothing. Not one thing Mills/Perry/Fiz said at the start of the season was about seriously competing for wins except lip service and everything they said was the opposite. So you may not like/trust them but let’s cut the gaslighting. The takes lately from the normally accurate yet pessimistic crew are awful. I’m an optimist only because it’s more pleasant for my mental state. However I realize it’s going to take a miracle like Zion/Durant/KP (being good) to make the Knicks contenders. But people around here are just making negative stuff up now or making judgements on the “type of player” management likes or doesn’t or what type of coach Fiz is going to be with little to no data. This Frank Isola level stuff.

This team doesn’t have one average passer for his position except Vonleh. “Eat what you kill” and “dungeon” are poor moment-in-time euphemisms talking about players’ willingness to attack the basket and that he has no permanent dog house (which is exactly what you want). Are we really drawing conclusions about how he would coach prime Chris Paul from those two throw away lines to the press? I mean imagine if you had to speak to the press every day about every minute detail of your job. Would everything you say come off as so thoughtful to a smart audience?

And no there is not enough data from management or coaching to make any serious analysis of their inherent biases. Mills signing of THJ aside.

For every data point about chucking and offense first players I give you signing and playing of Vonleh, drafting and playing MitchRob, benching Kanter etc etc. And I make no claims about those moves other then they are the so-far good mixed in with the we-don’t-know-yet like Knox.

And fuck this noise about how the Knicks wanted to win this season. Zero evidence. The media turns being open to Durant wanting to play here into desperation for FAs this summer. What bullshit. The media knows nothing about what’s going on inside MSG anymore, they just make shit up because angry people read articles. Hell, the whole ‘Fiz fixed Mud’ story is a media creation and it’s leading people to get pissed at Fiz when he says positive things about Mud. “He’s strutting around taking credit.” Please.

Is there a difference between “eat what you kill” and “keep what you kill”? Aren’t they the same basic phrase?

The only thing we’ve done fairly well is draft, but we’ve been doing that well all along and that competency was probably left over, not added. Gaines is gone.

I know fan fiction is fun, but may I ask where you’re getting the idea that Phil Jackson was a great drafter? I know specifics ain’t your thing but let’s take a look at his actual record:

2014:
Cleanthony Early
Thanasis Antetokounmpo
Louis Labeyrie
-I can’t confirm the existence of any of these people.

2015:
Kristaps Porzingis
Jerian Grant
Willy Hernangomez
-Definitely his best draft, but KP has thus far been average and injury prone (Phil Jackson wanted to trade him for Devin Booker and a pick, you may recall). Jerian Grant hasn’t amounted to anything and was traded, by Phil Jackson, for Derrick fucking Rose anyway. Willy was a good pick, but even his most ardent supporters (and I count myself among them) don’t view his upside as anything more than a nice bench piece.

2016:
Thanks Bargnani!
-Phil signed a bunch of scrubs like Ndour/Baker/Kuz but I guess we’ll give him a pass here.

2017:
Frank Ntilikina
Damyean Dotson
Ognen Jaramaz
-Frank has been ass and multiple players selected below him have amounted to something. Dotson looks like he could return value as a second rounder, but it’s a little hard to give Phil Jackson credit for acting on what turned out to be his consistent philosophy; “the best time to acquire a player is soon after they’ve been very credibly accused of sexual assault.” Jaramaz’ existence is also unconfirmed at this time.

I see two players (out of nine) who have clearly outperformed their draft slot; Willy Hernangomez and Damyean Dotson. So uh, make of that what you will. Phil Jackson: NBA Draft Extraordinaire looks like fan fiction to me.

I’m glad that we didn’t try to trade for Butler.

I’m glad that we didn’t try to trade for Butler.

It would have been insane for the Knicks to try to deal for him, but yes, even beyond that, he sure doesn’t make it easy to root for him.

Um, HELLO! I was the one who coined the phrase “eat what you kill” accidentally when I was paraphrasing Fiz THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

That’s right, you told me he said “Eat what you kill”! Tsk, tsk.

Seriously, though, come on, it’s the same darn phrase, so you were essentially right.

@64

Months ago I wrote about this at length. I analyzed those drafts to see all the players available when Phil picked, and with almost no exceptions he chose the player who turned out to be the BPA. In 2014, those players sucked, but so did everyone after them. Turner may be better than KP, but it is certainly far from settled, and Willy was an obvious second round gem. The same for Dotson. And Jaramaz… Who did Phil miss after him? Nobody.

So it really comes down to Frank. When I did my analysis, I was still optimistic, but with another few months it’s clear that no, probably Frank was NOT the BPA. Whether he’s a miss isn’t yet clear, but overall, that would be 1 in 9 that he blew. The rest he hit or it there was no quality option available at that spot.

You can’t look at a list of picks in a vacuum and say they failed. It’s about what was available at the time.

I’m okay with the ~30-win votes because it’s good to be hopelessly optimistic every now and then ; )

I’m thrilled that my cynical “The Knicks will somehow find a way to fuck this up and win too many games” guess was way off. Hooray!

Yeah, same deal, Ben, but I’m now optimistic that they won’t get anywhere near that win total, but you may be right that the Knicks will be the team that beats up on all the actively tanking teams at the end of the year. It’s certainly possible.

@72

I agree. Plus, even if a few players drafted after your own selection outperform the player you picked, that’s not an appropriate standard. It partially reflects the difficult of selecting BPA. That’s easier said than when you are mostly drafting teenagers.

A reasonable way to judge is by looking at what was generally available around where you selected and did you generally do better or worse than average. But you also have to wait long enough to see it to fruition because some guys are projected to develop much later than others. We essentially have 3 guys that were expected to be projects in KP, Frank and Knox because all came in especially young and raw.

For example, despite all the KP trashing, he was AHEAD of schedule. He was expected to be a 4 year project because he was so skinny and weak, but he was forced into the #1 role in year 3 and did OK.

@79 I don’t have the time or patience to go searching g through the internet but Fiz said on multiple occasions that wins would not be the measure of a successful season. And no one and by no one I mean not even management as bad as you think the Knicks is goes looking for wins with Vonleh and Hezonja. So please stop.

And no one and by no one I mean not even management as bad as you think the Knicks is goes looking for wins with Vonleh and Hezonja.

Doesn’t that make the Hezonja signing sound even more foolish then? “No one expects Hezonja to help the team win games, but let’s sign him for one year for essentially the full mid-level exception for…reasons.”

I guess ATL is not gonna win tonite…

This is only year 2 of Scott Perry’s reign. Not even half a year for Fizdale. It’s ridiculous to be so critical at this point. What do people expect? An overnight miracle? Who cares what the rotations are right now? Fiz doesn’t know the players yet. They don’t know themselves or each other. They run plays. They just don’t run them well yet. I see high pick and rolls, pin down screens, double screens etc. They’re not going to learn to execute all of this in a few months. This is a 3-5 year plan according to Perry. They are trying to develop young players. That makes sense to me. It may or may not work if they are patient. It definitely will not work if they blow the entire roster up every year and make impulsive moves like trade their top pick after 20 games.